Based on the advance of wireless technology, research is being conducted to support wireless Local Area Network (LAN) connection in a digital device such as a notebook computer and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). For example, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11, Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), and WFA Wi-Fi direct standards are working on a wireless LAN communication scheme of a digital device. A conventional wireless LAN communication method can be divided into an infrastructure mode where a digital device operating as a station communicates by connecting to a digital device acting as an access point, and an ad hoc mode where a plurality of digital devices acting as the stations are directly connected.
The IEEE 802.11 standard supports both of the infrastructure mode and the ad hoc mode. In the infrastructure mode and the ad hoc mode of the IEEE 802.11 standard, when one digital device sets a Service Set IDentifier (SSID), security key, and Internet Protocol (IP) address allocation scheme, the other digital device inputs the security key by searching the SSID and sets an IP address according to the set IP address allocation scheme. Thus, the digital devices are connected over the wireless LAN.
The WFA WPS standard supports the infrastructure mode, and the WFA Wi-Fi direct standard supports the ad hoc mode. Herein, in the infrastructure mode of the WFA. WPS standard and the ad hoc mode of the WFA Wi-Fi direct standard, when a Push Button Configuration (PBC) button is clicked in digital devices to connect or a Personal Identification Number (PIN) is generated in one digital device, the other digital device inputs the PIN, thus achieving the wireless LAN connection.
In the conventional wireless LAN connection method as discussed above, for the wireless LAN connection, a user needs to directly set and input the necessary information for the wireless LAN connection (e.g., the SSID, the security key, the IP address, and the PIN) in the digital device. However, prior knowledge about the wireless LAN is often required to directly set and input the necessary information for the wireless LAN connection, and accordingly it is difficult for many users to adopt this method.
To address this drawback, a technique (described in Korean Patent Application Serial No. 10-2010-0075504 to Samsung Electronics) for automatically exchanging the random PIN when two wireless LAN devices approach and connecting using the WPS PIN when the PIN exchange is successful is suggested to automatically connect the wireless LAN upon approaching the device to the intended device to connect.
However, as such a technique cannot acquire detailed information about the nearby device, the user cannot search for his/her intended peripheral device alone.